Tomatoes are a good source of nutrients including vitamin C, lycopene, and dietary fiber. With around 116 grams of water and key electrolytes, tomatoes help keep you hydrated.
Tomatoes provide health benefits thanks to their vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and bioactive compounds like lycopene, quercetin, resveratrol, and luteolin.
Tomatoes can be eaten raw, stewed, roasted or pan cooked.
Your July veg share is likely to include:
Sri Lankan Green Bean Curry – from Great British Chefs website
Ottolenghi’s Spicy Moroccan Carrot Salad
If you have a gas hob, put the aubergine directly onto a lit ring to char completely, turning occasionally with kitchen tongs, until burnt all over. Alternatively, use a barbecue or heat the grill to its highest setting and cook, turning occasionally, until completely blackened (the grill won’t give you the same smoky flavour). Set aside to cool on a plate, then peel off the charred skin and remove the stem. Roughly chop the flesh and set aside.
In a large pan, heat the oil, add the onion and carrots with a pinch of salt, and fry over a low-medium heat for 15-20 mins until the carrots have softened.
Add the aubergine, both types of lentils, the kidney beans with the liquid from the can, soy sauce, tomatoes, chocolate, chilli powder, oregano and the spices. Stir to combine, then pour in the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat to very low. Cover with a lid and cook for 1½ hrs, checking and stirring every 15-20 mins to prevent it from burning.
Remove the lid and let the mixture simmer over a low-medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 15 mins until you get a thick sauce. Stir in the lime juice and taste for seasoning – add more salt if needed. Serve hot over rice with whichever accompaniments you want!
To serve – brown rice, tortilla chips, mashed avocado, yogurt or soured cream, grated cheddar, roughly chopped coriander (optional)
Begin by making the curry leaf oil, as this will take a few hours to strain.
Place the curry leaves and vegetable oil in a blender and blitz at a high speed for several minutes until the oil turns green. Pour the contents of the blender into a muslin cloth hung over a bowl and leave to strain.
Add a dash of vegetable oil to a saucepan and fry the shallots, garlic, chillies, cinnamon and sprig of curry leaves for 5 minutes until soft. Add the diced tomato and cook for a further 5 minutes.
Add the green beans, chilli flakes, cumin, turmeric and pepper and cook gently for 5 minutes. Pour in the coconut milk and simmer for a few more minutes. If you’d like a drier curry with a thicker sauce, simply add less coconut milk.
Season to taste, then transfer to a serving bowl. Top with crispy shallots, extra curry leaves (ideally fried in a little oil until crisp) and finish with a drizzle of the curry leaf oil.
Preheat oven to 220C/425F (standard) or 180C/350F (fan/convection).
Cut/break broccoli into florets and pile onto baking tray.
Drizzle all over with extra virgin olive oil, scatter with garlic, salt and pepper. Toss with fingers or tongs, then spread out over tray in a single layer.
Roast for 20 to 25 minutes until the tips of the florets are slightly browned and crispy. The broccoli should be “tender crisp”, meaning just cooked through, not soft and floppy.
Remove from the oven and immediately drizzle over the lemon juice, lemon zest, and parmesan.
Toss quickly, transfer to serving plate and garnish with a bit more parmesan. Serve warm!
Peel the carrots and cut them, depending on their size, into cylinders or semi-circles 1cm thick; all the pieces should end up roughly the same size. Place in a large saucepan and cover with salted water. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes or until tender but still crunchy. Drain in a colander and leave to dry out.
Heat the oil in a large frypan and saute the onion for 12 minutes on medium heat until soft and slightly brown. Add the cooked carrots to the onions, followed by all the remaining ingredients, apart from the coriander and yoghurt. Remove from the heat and season liberally with salt, stir well and leave to cool.
Before serving, stir in the coriander, taste, and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Serve in individual bowls with a dollop of yoghurt, a drizzle of olive oil, and garnished with extra coriander.
5th June: More planting this week. Leeks, celeriac, brussels sprouts, French beans and lettuce and of course getting ready for our open day on Sunday.
12th June: We had a lovely day for Open Farm Sunday on 7th June. With 300 people booking a place it was our biggest event yet. We saw old friends and many new faces and with plenty of activities from our friends it was well worth all the effort it took to organise. Thank you so much to everybody who helped out. We’re already looking forward to next year!
19th June: This week we are weeding onions, courgettes, cucumbers and peppers and steerage hoeing squash, sweetcorn, courgettes, beans and leeks. We’re also sowing kale, January king cabbage and lettuce, tying up aubergines and planting lettuce and French and runner beans. It’s a busy week.
26th June: Keeping going in the heatwave but it definitely slows us down a bit! Obviously watering a lot but the rain from the previous week has helped and plants are resilient when they have got their roots down. We’re planting sweetcorn, red cabbage, parsley and lettuce this week, hoeing squash, sweetcorn, beans, carrots and parsnips and sowing fennel and purple sprouting broccoli.
30th June: Glad of some slightly cooler weather this week. Crops are growing well. Tomatoes are starting to ripen and there should be lots of cucumbers and courgettes in the next couple of weeks. French beans are on their way soon. This week we are weeding parsnips and carrots and planting autumn cauliflowers, savoy cabbage, swede and lettuce.
1st May : This week we are planting tomatoes in the polytunnels. We’re growing some cherry tomatoes this year, which we haven’t done for a while because as lovely as they are, they take a long time to pick. Anyway, we’re giving them a second chance, choosing larger fruited varieties will de-leaf the plants to make harvesting easier. Hopefully we won’t regret the decision. We’re also sowing squash, sweetcorn, lettuce and French beans and planting lettuce and broccoli in the field and cucumbers and courgettes in the polytunnels.
4th May : This week we are planting peppers in the polytunnels. They are not our most reliable crop, but we keep trying as I know people love them. I’ve read that the key is keeping them consistently warm. This year we’ve kept one of our propagation tunnels as a ‘hot’ tunnel. Partly because it has heated benches but mostly by keeping the doors closed for longer. The plants look great, but the downside is that the warm moist environment has favoured aphids. Normally I would leave this to nature but as the natural predators haven’t got going yet I have used a horticulture soap solution to deal with the pests. To be sure I’ve got them all I have dipped the whole plant in a bucket of the stuff. From now on we will leave it to the natural predators which I know will come. We are doing a whole tunnel of peppers this year. Bell peppers, pointed peppers and also trying a few varieties from Real Seeds. We’ll keep the tunnels closed at night to start with to give them a good start.
12th May : I’ve had a big delivery of irrigation equipment this week. Every year I buy a bit more and this year we should have enough sprinklers to have them permanently on the plot where they are needed rather than moving them around all the time. We have no rain to speak of for a couple of months so there is a lot of watering to do to keep the crops growing! We are also watering our seed bed for carrots, beetroot and parsnips to bring on the weeds, so we can mow them back and make a ‘stale seedbed’ to drill the seeds into. The potatoes are now up and so also in need of a drink – it’s important to keep up with the water to make sure nothing gets too dry.
19th May : We’re now in our hungry gap where veg from the winter stores is running low and the next wave of fresh veg is slow to come on. There will be plenty of veg but smaller portions and lighter shares for a while. This week we are watering potatoes, planting aubergine, basil, lettuce and French beans and sowing more French beans for later in the season. We have our marquee up now and we’re looking forward to our summer events, including more forest school with Green Leaf Forest School and Roots Nature Play, summer cooking workshops for kids and teens with La Bonte Catering and forest school for adults with Full Cup Fire Circle. Details of these TBC but all with be contributing to our Open Day on 7th June if you’d like a taster.
26th May : Taking advantage of the hot weather we are planting heat loving crops: courgettes, sweetcorn, squash, French beans and some outdoor tomatoes. We are irrigating like mad and watching it evaporate within hours but the plants are happy with the warm days and long hours of sunlight and growth is rapid now!
